


Lost Hope

by vsulli



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, inability to get pregnant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 08:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vsulli/pseuds/vsulli
Summary: Tante Heleen takes precautions with her girls, and now, years later, Inej and Kaz learn what these precautions are and how they effect their future





	Lost Hope

It was a question he never thought he’d be asking. A possibility he’d never thought he’d be hoping for. A future he stopped wanting and never thought he’d ever have. They’d tried, almost every night, almost every minute they were free, they tried positions and techniques that randoms on the street had told them about, they tried. But nothing was happening. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair one night, “I tried giving you everything but I can’t give you this.” 

She placed her small hands on the sides of his face, smiling at him with a smile he would rather die than never see again. She promised him she still loved him no matter what, reminding him that she was with him for him and not his abilities. 

“Nina is back tomorrow and says she knows a healer who can help us,” she’d told him, “they can tell us if something is wrong.” 

She kissed his forehead before laying down next to him, back pressed to his chest as she slowly relaxed and fell asleep. He could’t join her, however, trying to understand why nothing was working for them when people who weren’t even trying get it so easily. Resting his chin on her shoulder, he looked down at the hand that was splayed over the bed, her fourth finger showing him that they’d done everything right up until then.

A week later he found himself sitting across the closed door to his own bedroom. The healer needed the room empty to concentrate, she’d ordered him out the moment she’d been done with him and called Inej in. Nina had slid down to the floor next to him, and if he were anyone else, he knew she’d have taken his hand in her own and promised him everything was going to be okay. But nothing was ever okay with them, even after years of them being at the top of the world. Things still went wrong, plans never went as they were supposed to, these are things that they dealt with on the daily. Yet, he felt like he never felt any of those other times. With every second that door was closed, he felt little cracks appearing inside him, things that were once sealed opening up once more at the thought of something being wrong. 

“It could be just the stress of wanting it so bad,” Nina finally said, “I knew of women who couldn’t until they’d stopped trying.”

“Too bad we don’t know how to stop trying.” 

She frowned and sighed before standing, holding her hand out to him in vain, knowing he wouldn’t take the help to stand. 

“Let’s go for a walk, Brekker, you need some air.” 

They walked, only down the street and back up again, Kaz not wanting stray far from the house in case they were called back in and he wasn’t there. It was the healer standing at the door that made him run the last few feet to the house, the look on her face quickly telling him what he didn’t want to hear.”

“I felt nothing inside of her,” the healer said, sipping from the cup of tea Nina had handed her. She’d put Inej to sleep for the checkup, and informed them that she’d be awake in a few hours and would want all of them there when she was told the news. They sat in the small kitchen until then, her and Nina drinking their tea while Kaz’s sat untouched in front of him. “There is usually something else alive inside women, millions of little bundles of cells that hold half a life. I didn’t feel any inside of her.” Kaz knew the basics to the reproductive system inside of women, but he was no healer or medik. “Eggs, Mister Brekker,” the healer said, “we call them eggs.” He knew of that. 

“She would have known if she’d been sterilized, wouldn’t she?” Nina asked

Kaz gripped the edge of the table, his nails scratching through the hard wood. He should have known, he should have at least suspected. The same thing was done to the girls at the White Rose, though the procedure was consensual, they’d had the choice whether to do it or not. Inej wasn’t given the choice, or the knowledge of it even happening. She wouldn’t have been the only one. He stood, fast enough to knock the chair he’d been sitting on to the ground, the motion and sound making the two women jump. 

“Send a runner when Inej wakes up,” he said as he started out toward the door.

“I need to know where you’re going to do that.”

“I’m going hunting for a peacock.” 

* * *

If the false plague that Nina had created did any damage to the Menagerie, the business didn’t show it. Men and women still streamed in and out of the building, not seeming to remember that just over a decade ago, a red X marked the front doors. Kaz scowled up at it before he walked in, the plague may have lessened business, but the fact that the building still stood and was pact with people, was enough for him to hate it. 

Heleen Van Houden seemed to be ageless, she still looked the same as she did the first time he’d seen her standing in the center of her brothel. It was the work of a tailor that Kaz knew was stowed away in one of the top floor bedrooms. Women like her didn’t deserve the privileges of a tailor, they deserved to grow old and wilt. 

She seemed to sense him walking in, her eyes going straight to him the moment he stepped inside. No words were said, but people screamed when Kaz pulled the gun out of his coat and aimed it directly between her jewel lined eyes. 

“It’s been a long time, Dirtyhands,” she drawled, looking unaffected by the weapon that could end her life in less than a second. “How’s my little Suli Lynx?” 

Kaz pressed down the trigger, smirking when she finally showed any ounce of fear. The gun clicked, but no bullet was released. 

“Imagine if it was loaded,” he finally said, “it may not be my way anymore, but I’m not incapable of killing if I have a good reason.” He paused and looked around, all eyes were on them. “Remember that you’ve given me a reason, Heleen, but I need some names before I put a hole through your head.” 

Threats like this would have had him picked up by the Stadwatch in a matter of minutes, but he was Kaz Brekker, he owned the Stadwatch and after everything she’s done, all Heleen Van Houden had were some diamonds and a handful of girls that would leave her side the second they could. 

He sat across from her in her office, being escorted there by the hired muscle that stood at the Menagerie doors, Kaz wanted to show her how her men wouldn’t lay a hand on him even if she told them to, but he didn’t, he still liked the idea of Heleen thinking she was safe.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he paused, “today. But I should.”

She didn’t let out a sigh of relief, only shifted her eyes to the one-way glass that surrounded her office. She could look out, but no one could look in, something that is critical in her establishment because she needed to know what her girls were up to when she wasn’t around. However, in the past she looked around in glee, her entire world laid out in front of her making her money and giving her everything she ever wanted. Now, as she looked out, Kaz could see thoughts swimming through her head that scared even the great Tante Heleen. He smirked.

“It will all be taken away eventually, Heleen,” he reminded her, “just because I’m not putting a bullet through your head or slicing open your throat at this very moment, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”

“And why is my life on your list now, Brekker? I haven’t gone after that Suli Lynx of yours in years.” 

“Why?” He stood, eyes narrowed and teeth bared, the image of Dirtyhands from those first few years of his arrival coming back ten fold, and Heleen looked ready to soil herself. “Because I’m trying to have a fucking family but my wife can’t bare my fucking children!” 

She froze, the tiniest of smiles ghosting over her face that Kaz wanted to blow off with a bullet. But he couldn’t, he still needed her. 

“She was sterilized for her own good, Brekker, all the girls are,” she spoke as if it was a gift, the best thing she could give her slaves. “It’s not my fault she couldn’t understand what was being said to her.”

“Translators exist.”

“I didn’t want a translator, I wanted whores who couldn’t get pregnant.” 

He did as he had done back at the house, digging his nails into the hard wood of his chair’s arm rests, trying to keep the urge to dig a blade through her heart at bay while he finished what he came for. 

“Names, of the healer who did it, of the men who held her down, and any one else involved.” 

She said nothing, just sat back, smiling at him with the same smile as before. 

“What do I get in return?”

He moved quickly, as she was talking he’d reloaded his gun, and now, it had one less bullet, and Heleen stared at the shattered glass that now lined her office floor. He’d broken the peacock figurine she had perched on her desk, the bullet now embedded in the only real wall of her office, right near her arm. 

“I don’t put the next one through your skull.” 

As he listened, memorizing every name and address that she listed off for him, he imagined the bullet hitting her right between her eyes, wanting to see her body hit her desk, blood pooling all over the contracts and the forged indenture agreements. However, he just sat, making no move to make his imagination come to life. By the end of it, she sat, stiff as if bracing herself for something. 

Then he stood, and she raised her arms to protect herself.

“Thank you, Heleen,” he said, buttoning his coat with the gun still in his hand. He said nothing else when he turned and made for the door, not planning to turn around at all to even look at her one last time. But then-

“You should be happy that whore can’t ha-”

Heleen Van Houden, Tante Heleen, The Peacock, hit the floor like any other barrel rat, one eye wide, the other blown out by a bullet. No parade, no fireworks, just another body for the boats to take at night and dump in the water. 

When he stepped out of the office, all eyes were on him, everyone hearing the shots but not understanding a thing. Kaz stood facing them all, face hard, hands resting easily on his cane. 

“Everyone but those who work here get out in the next five seconds or the next bullets will go through you.” 

People ran screaming, and the girls huddled together on one of the feathery couches. Kaz waited the five seconds, and five more before he put the gun back into his coat. 

* * *

“Where the fuck have you been, Brekker? How do you just leave Inej like that, how can you,” Kaz tuned Nina out as he made his way through the house. He climbed the stairs slowly, so slowly that Nina took a step back just to watch. He put a hand up to stop her, shaking his head when she questioned him. He needed to be with her alone, and Nina thankfully understood this. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said the moment he stepped into the room, and his heart shattered into a million pieces when her voice cracked and tears started down her cheeks. She stood in the middle of the room, practically falling into him when he wrapped his arms under her and lifted her. She continued crying as he walked to the bed, and didn’t stop even when he sat her down on his lap.

“You did nothing, Inej,” he whispered, “nothing is your fault, nothing.” 

“I can’t, I can’t give you what you want. What you deserve, Kaz, you’ve tried so hard to,” she took in a shaky breath, and Kaz pressed his lips to her head as she did, “tried so hard to change, you did change, and now I can’t-”

“Inej, Inej I didn’t change to have this,” he assured her, she sniffled and finally looked back up at him. 

“Yes you did, this is what you wanted, and I-”

“I didn’t change to have a child, Inej,” he said again, “I changed to have you, to have you in my life, I took off all my armour for you, I became a better man for you, you and no one else.” 

She nodded slowly and laid her head back down on his shoulder, and Kaz understood. He shifted, not letting go even once as he moved back on the bed to rest against the headboard. She needed to cry, she needed him to hold her. She was strong, but there are things that could break even her. Even if for only a little while. 

“I killed her,” he finally said after almost hours of silence, “Heleen, she’s dead. She can’t hurt any more girls.”

She looked at him for the first time, her eyes red, her lip swollen from where she was biting it, and she looked relieved. Taking his face between her hands, she brought him up to press his forehead against her’s, closing her eyes as she took a deep breath.

“Thank you, Kaz, thank you for saving me and all of them.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave some feedback! I don’t write much angst and I kinda really like doing it but I don’t even know if I’m any good :) it will be really appreciated!


End file.
